it is really the work of that poet), is one of the most famous
productions of early Cymric literature. Llywarc’h Hên’s _floreat_ is by
some authorities placed in the middle of the 7th century, by others so
early as the beginning of the 6th, and by others as really extending
from early in the 6th till the middle of the 7th: the drift of evidence
indicates the remoter date as the more probable. The translation here
given was made about a hundred years ago by William Owen. It is not easy
to find an English equivalent for “Gorwynion,” a plural word which
signifies objects that have a very bright whiteness or glare. Perhaps
the word glitterings might serve, though, as has been suggested, the
nearest term would be _Coruscants_. The last line of these verses
generally contains some moral maxim, unconnected with the preceding
lines, except in the metre. It is said that the custom arose through the
desire of the bards to assist the memory in the conveyance of
instruction by oral means. In the translation the rhymed or assonantal
unity of the tercets is lost, with the result that the third-line maxim
generally comes in with almost ludicrous inappositeness. According to
the _Triads of the Isle of Britain_, Llywarc’h Hên passed his younger
days at the Court of Arthur. In one triad he is alluded to as one of
the three free guests at the Arthurian Court; in another, as one of the
three counselling warriors. According to tradition, the bones of this
princely bard lie beneath the Church of Llanvor, where, as averred, he
was interred at the patriarchal age of 150 years. He was not one of the
Sacred Bards, because of his military profession as a prince and knight;
for these might not carry arms, and in their presence a naked sword even
might not be held. The _Beirdd_ were not poets and sages only, but were
accounted and accepted as missioners of peace.
LLYWARC’H HEN. PAGE 71
This is another series of “Gorwynion,” attributed to Llywarc’h Hên by Mr
Skene, who has translated it from _The Red Book of Hergest_ (MS.
compiled in 14th and 15th centuries). The English rendering of _The Red
Book_ was issued through Messrs Edmonston & Douglas of Edinburgh in
1868.
TALIESIN. PAGE 73
“Song to the Wind” (_Vide_ Introduction). “The Song about the Wind,” of
which only a section is given here, will be found in full in Skene’s
_Four Ancient Books of Wales_, Vol. I., page 535, and is the most famous
poem by the most famous of Cymric bards. It was first translated, some
forty-five years ago, by Lady Charlotte Guest, whose Englished
renderings of the “Mabinogion” attracted the attention of scholars
throughout the whole Western world. (Longmans, 1849 and later.) Emerson
delighted in the “Song,” and declared it to be one of the finest pieces
of its kind extant in any literature. See also the _Myvyrian
Archaiology_.
ANEURIN. PAGE 75
Aneurin was one of the famous warrior bards of ancient Wales. His birth
is noted as _Circa_ 500 A.D., and in any case he flourished during the
first half of the 6th century. Aneurin--like Taliesin, called “the
monarch of the bards”--was a Briton of Manau Gododin, a principality or
province of Cymric Scotland, now Mid-Lothian and Linlithgowshire. Manau
Gododin stretched from the Carron of to-day (the Carun of Ossian), some
miles to the north-west of Falkirk to the river Esk, that now divides
Mid-Lothian and East Lothian. Manau Gododin was then much more Celtic
(Pictish) than Gododin. “Breatan Cymru” (_i.e._ the country of the Welsh
Britons) then comprised the larger part of southern Scotland--that is,
from the north end of Loch Lomond, and from the upper reaches of the
Gwruid (the Forth), to the Mull of Galloway on the south-west; eastward
to a line drawn from the western Lammermuirs, by Melrose, Kelso, and
Jedburgh, and so down by the Cheviots to Hexham, and thence
southwesterly by Cumberland. The exception was the Pictish or Celtic
province of Galloway--bounded on the west by Carrawg (that part of
Ayrshire known as Carrick); on the north by Coel (Kyle); on the east by
a line drawn from Sanquhar through Nithsdale and by Dumfries to
Locharmoss and the Solway; on the south-west, by Novant (Mull of
Galloway); and on the south by the Solway Firth.
Aneurin was a contemporary of the princely poet, Llywarc’h Hên. He was
called Aneurin y Coed Awr ap Caw o Gwm Cawlwyd--or, again, Aneurin
Gwadrydd--both designations indicative of his greatness. It has been
maintained that Aneurin is identical with the celebrated Gildas, “the
author of the Latin epistle which Bede so blindly copied,” both Aneurin
and Gildas having been sons of Caw. He is supposed to be alluded to as
the seventh bard, in a curious fragment preserved in the _Myvyrian
Archaiology_ (Vol. III.), which I excerpt here.
“The seven questions put by Catwg the Wise, to the Seven Wise Men of the
College of Llanvuthan, and the answers of these men:
1. “What is the greatest wisdom of man?” “To be able to do evil and
not to do it,” answered _St Tedio_.
2. “What is the highest goodness of man?” “Justice,” answered
_Tahaiarn_.
3. “What is the worst principle of man?” “Falsehood,” answered
_Taliesin_, chief of Bards.
4. “What is the noblest action of man?” “Correctness,” answered
_Cynan_, son of Clydno Eddin.
5. “What is the greatest folly of man?” “To desire a common evil,
which he cannot do,” answered _Ystyvan_, the Bard of Teilo.
6. “Who is the poorest man?” “He who is not contented with his own
property,” answered _Arawn_, son of Cynvarch.
7. “Who is the richest man?” “He who does not covet anything
belonging to others,” answered _Gildas_ of Coed Awr.
“The Ode to the Months” is given in the translation of William Probert
(1820), according to whom the Ode contains moral maxims and observations
which were known and repeated long before Aneurin lived, and were put
into verse by him as an aid to the memory: “valuable, because they show
the modes of thinking and expression which the primitive inhabitants of
Britain used nearly 2000 years ago.”
DAFYDD AP GWILYM. PAGE 78
(Fl. 14th century.) In his love of Nature, and in the richness of his
poetic imagination (as well, so say those who can read Welsh fluently,
as in his poetry), Dafydd ap Gwilym is the Keats of Wales. The romance
of his life and wild-wood experiences has yet to be written: and we
still await an adequate translator--though, to judge from some recent
renderings by Mr Ernest Rhys, in an interesting short study of Dafydd,
recently published in _The Chap Book_ (Stone & Kimball, Chicago) we may
not have to wait much longer. He was a love-child: of noble parentage,
though born under a hedge at Llandaff. His mother wedded after his
birth; but he remained the “wilding” throughout his life. He became the
favourite of Ivor Hael of Emlyn, with whose daughter Morvydd he fell in
love. He wooed and won her “under the greenwood tree,” but only to lose
her shortly afterward, when she was forcibly married to a man called Bwa
Bach. Dafydd stole her from her legitimate husband, but was captured and
imprisoned. His ultimate release was due to the payment of the imposed
fine, the sum having been got together by the men of Glamorgan. His most
ardent love-poetry is addressed to this fair Morvydd.
RHYS GOCH OF ERYRI. PAGE 82
There are two famous poets of the name of Rhys Goch; probably both
belong to the 14th century (and Wilkins certainly disputes the claim of
Rhys Goch ap Rhiccart to be of the 12th century). This Ode is an
illustration of the sound answering the sense. Rhys was in love with the
fair Gwen of Dol, and sent a peacock to her. His rival, also a bard,
composed a poem to the Fox, beseeching it to kill his rival’s present,
and, singularly enough, the bird was destroyed by a fox, and the rival
bard was happy. Stung by this misadventure, Rhys composed the above,
which, in the original, so teems with gutturals that Sion Tudor called
it the “Shibboleth of Sobriety, because no man, when drunk, could
possibly pronounce it.”
RHYS GOCH AP RHICCART. PAGE 83
See foregoing Note.
IRISH (MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY)
A.E. PAGES 87-91
From _Homeward Songs by the Way_ (Whaley, Dublin).
This little book, published in paper covers, and apparently with every
effort to avoid rather than court publicity, almost immediately
attracted the notice of the few who watch contemporary poetry with
scrupulously close attention. The author, who is well known in Dublin
literary society, prefers to disguise his identity in public under the
initials A.E., though it is no longer a secret that Mr G. W. Russell is
the name of this poet-dreamer, who, like Blake, of whom he is a student
and interpreter, has also a faculty of pictorial expression of a rare
and distinctive kind.
WM. ALLINGHAM. (1824-1889.) PAGES 92-94
Every lover of Irish poetry is familiar with “The Fairies” of the late
William Allingham. He is an Irish rather than distinctively a Celtic
poet in the strict sense of the word; but every now and again he strikes
the genuine Celtic note, as in his well-known “Fairies,” and the little
poem called the “Æolian Harp,” by which he is also represented here.
Much the best critical summary of his life-work is to be found in the
brief memoir by Mr W. B. Yeats in Miles’ _Poets and Poetry of the
Century_, Vol. V., p. 209. Among the innumerable love songs of the Irish
peasantry there are few more beautiful than Allingham’s “Mary Donnelly.”
As Mr Yeats says, he was “the poet of little things and little moments,
and neither his emotions nor his thoughts took any wide sweep over the
world of Man and Nature.” His “Laurence Bloomfield” is already
practically forgotten; but many of the lighter and often exquisitely
deft lyrics of his early life will remain in the memory of the Irish
people, and one or two at least in English literature.
THOMAS BOYD. PAGE 95
So far as I know, Mr Thomas Boyd has not published any volume of verse.
Some of his poems have appeared in _United Ireland_, among them the
beautiful lines, “To the Lianhaun Shee.”
EMILY BRONTË. (1818-1848.) PAGE 97
It may be as well to explain to those readers who take it for granted
that Emily Brontë is to be accounted an English poet, that she was of
Irish nationality and birth. The name Brontë, so familiar now through
the genius of herself and her sister, was originally Prunty. Everything
from her pen has a note of singular distinction; but perhaps she could
hardly be more characteristically represented than by the poem called
“Remembrance.” The, in quantity, meagre poetic legacy of the author of
_Wuthering Heights_ is comprised (under her pseudonym, Ellis Bell) in
the volume _Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell_.
STOPFORD A. BROOKE. PAGE 98-100
“The Earth and Man” and “Song” (from the poem called “Six Days”) are
from Mr Stopford Brooke’s volume, _Poems_ (Macmillan & Co.). These seem
to me fairly representative of the distinctive atmosphere which Mr
Brooke conveys in all his poetry. See particularly his _Riquet of The
Tuft_ (1880) and _Poems_ (1888).
JOHN K. CASEY. PAGE 101-3
Most of Mr Casey’s poems appeared above the signature “Leo.” Born in
1846, the son of a peasant, his early efforts to make literature his
profession were handicapped by inevitable disadvantages. In 1876 he was
arrested as a Fenian conspirator, and imprisoned. This, combined with
the influence of his unselfish patriotism and the popularity of many of
his lyrics, gave him a recognised place in the Irish Brotherhood of
Song.
GEORGE DARLEY. (1795-1846.) PAGE 104
This remarkable poet, who has so strangely lapsed from public
remembrance, was in his own day greatly admired by his fellow-poets and
the most discerning critics of the period. Mrs Browning, and Robert
Browning still more, were deeply impressed by what is now his best known
production--_Sylvia: a Lyrical Drama_ (1836); and Alfred Tennyson was so
struck by the quality of the young poet’s work that he volunteered to
defray the cost of publishing his verse. Lord Tennyson frequently, in
conversation, alluded to George Darley as one of the “hopelessly
misapprehended men”; and we have Robert Browning’s own authority, says
Darley’s latest biographer, Mr John H. Ingram, for stating that
_Sylvia_ did much to determine the form of his own early dramas.
_Sylvia_, again, charmed Coleridge; and in 1836, Miss Mitford, whom Mr
Ingram calls a leading spirit among the _literati_ of her day,
writes:--“I have just had a present of a most exquisite poem, which old
Mr Carey (the translator of Dante and Pindar) thinks more highly of than
any poem of the present day--‘Sylvia, or The May Queen,’ by George
Darley. It is exquisite--something between the ‘Faithful Shepherdess’
and the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.’”
Darley was the eldest child of Arthur Darley, of the Scalp, County
Wicklow. The poet, however, was not born there, but in Dublin, in the
year 1795. While he was a child, his parents emigrated to the United
States; and the boy spent the first ten years of his life at the family
home in Wicklow. In due time, and subsequent to the return of his
parents from America, he went through the usual scholastic routine,
though he did not graduate at Trinity College, Dublin, till his
twenty-fifth year--a delay in great part due to what, then and later, he
considered a disastrous impediment of speech. From the loss of a
scholarship to the social deprivations he underwent in London, this
infirmity, he declared, was his evil fortune. His first book, _The
Errors of Ecstasie_, was published (1822) in London, where he had
settled. Needless to say, as this volume consists mainly of a dialogue
between a Mystic and the Moon, the reading public remained in absolute
ignorance of the new poet. His second book (1826) consisted of a series
of prose tales and verses, collectively entitled--_The Labours of
Idleness; or, Seven Nights’ Entertainments_--set forth as by “Guy
Penseval.” Three years later appeared his chief work, _Sylvia_.
Notwithstanding its divers shortcomings, some of them frankly
acknowledged by the author himself, _Sylvia_ is a creation of genuine
imagination, and possesses a haunting and quite distinctive charm. Both
the merits and demerits of his too often uncontrolled style are
adequately indicated in the criticism of Mr Ingram: “[frequently] his
wild Celtic fancy breaks its curb and carries him into clouds of
metaphor as marvellous as they are musical, although often the flight
ends by a hasty and undignified descent to commonplace earth.” There is
no commonplace, however, in his exquisite faëry verse, which, in the
words of the same critic, “is among the loveliest in the language; at
times is even sweeter than Drayton’s, and is as fantastic as
Shakespeare’s own.”
For ten years the poet kept silence; but in 1839 he issued his
fragmentary and extraordinary _Nepenthe_--a poem which, with all its
brilliant quality and daring richness of imagery, might well be taken as
an example of the Celtic genius _in extremis_--so unreservedly does he
give way to an uncontrolled imagination. Perhaps the best thing said
about _Nepenthe_ is in a letter from the author himself, wherein he
writes:--“Does it not speak a heat of brain mentally Bacchic?”
Nothing that Darley published afterwards enhanced his reputation. Lovers
of his best work, however, should read the posthumous volume of his
“Poems” edited by R. and M. J. Livingstone--a rare volume, as it was
printed for private circulation. It contains some of the songs from an
unpublished lyrical drama called _The Sea Bride_; and it is from this
that the “Dirge,” quoted at page 104 in this book, comes. In this
posthumous collection also is included the following striking and
characteristic lyric:--
THE FALLEN STAR.
A star is gone! a star is gone!
There is a blank in Heaven,
One of the cherub choir has done
His airy course this even.
He sat upon the orb of fire
That hung for ages there,
And lent his music to the choir
That haunts the nightly air.
But when his thousand years are passed,
With a cherubic sigh
He vanished with his car at last,
For even cherubs die!
Hear how his angel brothers mourn--
The minstrels of the spheres--
Each chiming sadly in his turn
And dropping splendid tears.
The planetary sisters all
Join in the fatal song,
And weep this hapless brother’s fall
Who sang with them so long.
But deepest of the choral band
The Lunar Spirit sings,
And with a bass-according hand
Sweeps all her sullen strings.
From the deep chambers of the dome
Where sleepless Uriel lies,
His rude harmonic thunders come
Mingled with mighty sighs.
The thousand car-borne cherubim,
The wandering eleven,
All join to chant the dirge of him
Who fell just now from Heaven.
After a life of great intellectual activity, but of singular isolation
and of misanthropic unhappiness, George Darley died in London on the
23rd of November 1846, in his fifty-first year. For further information
as to the personality and writings of this strange, undeservedly
neglected, but unbalanced man of genius, the reader may be referred to
the delightful edition of _Sylvia_, with Introduction, by Mr John H.
Ingram, published by Mr J. M. Dent (1892).
AUBREY DE VERE. PAGE 105-6
Mr Aubrey De Vere is one of the most scholarly poets of Ireland. All his
work is informed with a high and serious spirit; and though the bulk of
it is not distinctively Celtic, either in sentiment or utterance, not
even distinctively Irish, he has written some poems which are as dear to
Nationalists and Celticists as is almost any other verse by contemporary
poets. Mr Aubrey De Vere is the younger brother of Sir Stephen De Vere,
Bart. (the translator of Horace, and himself a poet of distinction), and
son of Aubrey De Vere, the poet friend of Wordsworth. He was born in
1814, and has lived most of his life, with long intervals in London and
in several parts of Europe, at his birthplace, Curragh Chase, Adare, Co.
Limerick. Among his most noteworthy writings are:--_The Waldensees_
(1842); _The Search after Proserpine_ (1843); _Poems_ (1853); _The
Sisters_ (1861); _The Infant Bridal: and other Poems_ (1864); _Irish
Odes_ (1869); _The Legends of St Patrick_ (1872); _Alexander the Great_,
a poetical drama (1874); and another drama, _St Thomas of Canterbury_
(1876); _Antar and Zara: and other Poems_ (1877); _Legends of the Saxon
Saints_ (1879); and _The Foray of Queen Meave_, based upon an ancient
Irish epic (1882). Since then Mr Aubrey De Vere has published a
Selection of his poems and one or two books of a religious nature. His
best prose work is to be found in his _Essays chiefly on Poetry_ (1887),
and _Essays chiefly Literary and Ethical_ (1889).
FRANCIS FAHY. PAGE 107
Author of _Irish Songs and Poems_, published under the pseudonym
“Dreolin.” Mr Fahy is a member of the group of notable lyrists whose
captain is Sir Samuel Ferguson.
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. (1810-1886.) PAGE 109
This celebrated poet and archæologist was born in Belfast. He has aptly
been called a man of encyclopædic learning; but this learning did not
prevent his becoming perhaps the foremost Irish poet of the Middle
Victorian period. His most ambitious poetic work is _Congal: an Epic
Poem_ (1872)--a work full of lofty imagination and epical music, but
unfortunate in its metrical setting. His short poem, “The Forging of the
Anchor,” is one of the most celebrated and popular poems of our era.
Even yet, the influence of his _Lays of the Western Gael_ (1865) is
considerable, and for good. “Cean Dubh Deelish” (darling dark head), of
which several able, and one or two good translations have been made,
finds its happiest interpreter in Ferguson. How many poets and lovers
have repeated these lines--
“Then put your head, darling, darling, darling,
Your darling black head my heart above;
Oh, mouth of honey, with thyme for fragrance,
Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?”
PAGE 110
“Molly Asthore” is also a paraphrase. The original is ascribed to a
celebrated Irish Gaelic bard, Cormac O’Con.
PAGE 112
“The Fair Hills of Holy Ireland,” is familiar to Irish men and women in
every part of the world.
ALFRED PERCIVAL GRAVES. PAGE 113
One of the best known names of Ireland of to-day. Mr Graves, born in
Dublin in 1846, is thoroughly national, and his delightful work is
perhaps as adequately typical of the Irish spirit as that of any one man
could be. His lyric faculty--or at any rate his movement, his verve--is
unsurpassed by any living Irishman. These few examples of his poetical
writings should win him many more readers. His first book, _Songs of
Killarney_, was published over twenty years ago. Since then he has
issued _Irish Songs and Ballads_, _Songs of Old Ireland_, and (1880) his
best known collection, _Father O’Flynn: and other Irish Lyrics_. _Irish
Songs and Airs_ is the title of his promised contribution to Sir Gavan
Duffy’s Irish Library.
GERALD GRIFFIN. (1803-1840.) PAGE 121
The author of the lovely song, “Eileen Aroon” (Nellie, my Darling), was
born in Limerick. His chief work is his novel, _The Collegians_, which
has been pronounced to be “the most perfect Irish novel published.” I
have heard that Tennyson once “went mooning about for days,” repeating
with endless gusto, and with frequent expressions of a wish that he was
the author of, the closing lines:--
Youth must with time decay,
Eileen Aroon!
Beauty must fade away,
Eileen Aroon!
Castles are sacked in war,
Chieftains are scattered far,
Truth is a fixèd star,
Eileen Aroon!
NORA HOPPER. PAGE 123 ETC.
This young Irish poet made an immediate impression by her _Ballads in
Prose_ (John Lane). Both in prose and verse she displays the true Celtic
note, and often the unmistakable Celtic intensity. The lovely lyrics
“April in Ireland,” and “The Wind among the Reeds,” are from _Ballads in
Prose_. “The Dark Man” has not hitherto appeared in print, and I am
indebted to Miss Hopper for her permission to quote it here. It is, I
understand, to be included in her shortly forthcoming volume, to be
published by Mr John Lane.
DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D. PAGE 126
Dr Hyde, one of the foremost living expositors of Gaelic folklore in
Ireland, was born about thirty-five years ago in the Co. Roscommon,
where he has since resided. He graduated at Trinity College, Dublin,
after an exceptionally brilliant University career. He is now President
of the Gaelic League, and one of the acknowledged leaders of the Gaelic
wing of the Celtic Renascence; but from the first he was in the front
rank of those who are working for the preservation of the ancient Irish
language and the rescue of its beautiful fugitive literature. Although
best known by his Irish Tales, taken down at first hand from the
peasantry, and other Folk-collections, and his invaluable and unique
_The Love Songs of Connacht_ (Connaught), he is himself a poet of mark.
(See, also, Note XI., _supra_.) Those who are in a position to judge
declare his Gaelic poetry, which appears in the Irish Press above the
signature “An Chraoibhin Aoibhinn,” to be of altogether exceptional
excellence. The work Dr Douglas Hyde does deserves the most cordial
recognition. No man has worked more whole-heartedly, more
enthusiastically, and with more far-reaching success for the cause of
the Irish-Gaelic language, folk-lore, and literature, and, it may be
added, the best interests of the Irish of the soil.
The songs by which he is represented in this volume are from the _Love
Songs of Connacht_ (Fisher Unwin, 1893), a book which is not only
indispensable to the Celtic scholar, but should be in the hands of every
lover of Celtic literature, old-time or new. All are translations,
though perhaps paraphrastic rather than metaphrastic. Both in their
music and in their intensity--in, also, their peculiar lyric lilt--they
are distinctively West Irish. The collection from which these poems are
drawn was issued as _The Fourth Chapter of the Songs of Connacht_. The
preceding three appeared in the now defunct _Nation_. They were all
originally written in Irish; but very wisely, or at any rate for us very
fortunately, Dr Hyde interpolated translations. In these he has
endeavoured to reproduce the vowel-rhymes as well as the exact metres of
the original poems. We must hope to see the reprint, in like fashion, of
the predecessors of this volume.
LIONEL JOHNSON. PAGE 133
Though come of a Dublin family, and otherwise Irish by descent, Mr
Johnson was born at Broadstairs in Kent (1867). He first became known to
the reading public, as a poet, by his contributions to _The Book of the
Rhymers’ Club_, notable for their distinction of touch. Since then Mr
Johnson has published much in prose and verse, though in book form he
has not, I think, produced any other prose work than his admirable study
of Thomas Hardy, or any other volume of poetry than his _Poems_. His
work is not characterised by distinctively Celtic quality, though
occasionally, as in “The Red Wind” and “To Morfydd,” the Celtic note
makes itself audible. No doubt--to judge from internal evidence in his
later writings--Mr Johnson’s poetic work, at least, will develop more
and more along the line of his racial bent.
DENIS FLORENCE MACCARTHY. (1817-1882.) PAGE 135
Mr Maccarthy, who was a barrister in Dublin, and one of the main
supports of the _Nation_, is best known by his fine translations of
Calderon’s Dramas. The “Lament,” by which he is here represented, has
always seemed to me his most haunting lyrical achievement. It is
necessary to add, however, that this poem is somewhat condensed from the
original--which is weakened by diffuseness. The score or so of lines
beginning “As fire-flies fade,” have been favourites with many poets of
Maccarthy’s own time and later.
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. (1803-1849.) PAGE 137